Entrance With Velvet Slippers

 

 LOCATION: CZECHOSLOVAKIA, 1989

   

& the old world couldn't cope with revolution, sauntering in 

velvet-bosomed & unviolent.

a flower knows it is a flower, but a man a bloated child, will play god will drape his rule on a land like a stifling quilt over defenceless sod. the mind may stake claim as the part of the self most essential, but the driving force is that organ deep within, that strange & beautiful thing that alters the course. & so, in Czechoslovakia's heart a blossom grew, a seed of change.

those youthful blooms, cheeks rosy against fate with passion and purity, stood thanking that flower picked with fingers of hate before it ripened, now a symbol for good. one set counter-communism, the other a no-fascism-may-enter stake in the ground. neither offering violence or pain only holding a bouquet for a brother without arms, a friend slain both beaten, but never stopping their sound.

as flowers grow on through concrete & snow these budding dreams grew faster with strength from workers & intellectuals & low- ly playwrights who now traveled the length of the country to sow their seeds. & a million lovely blooms who never saw the sun now gathered in parks & theatres & streets & shouted their needs jangled their keys, sounding the ever nearing end & the new beginning it harks.

a bloom will never injure, but it will bold- ly show its true colors & demand its voice a chance to be heard. It will hold out its velvety petals & invite no choice even to those bloated gods but to listen. & the flowers that grew from seeds carried on the natural breath of the wind will resolutely return & return & glisten with fierce & gentle hope, unharried & hurrying together to distil

the truth held by the heart into a new world. & so from buds in Wenceslas Square came the end of an era in barely a few weeks, an impassioned return to the fair & democratic. & the old world couldn’t cope with revolution, sauntering in velvet-bosomed & unviolent, full-throated & sparkling. from an old regime a new one blossomed & from the springtime flowers entered hope & a quiet & peaceful overhaul of everything.

collages & text by Annika Jordan